The present invention pertains generally to lasers and more particularly to excimer lasers.
Lasing of the XeBr e-beam excited exciplex has been known to the prior art as disclosed by S. K. Searles and G. A. Hart, Appl. Phys. Letts. 27 243 (1975). Although XeBr lasing as disclosed by Searles and Hart supra was the earliest noble gas monohalide excimer lased, XeBr has never shown any promise of becoming a useful coherent source. In fact, prior art emissions by XeBr e-beam excited lasers have been so close to threshold that measurements of output energy could not be made.
Although now known to the prior art, the use of e-beam excited discharges in prior art XeBr lasers, initially forms a large number of atomic and molecular ions such as Xe.sub.2.sup.+, Ar.sub.2.sup.+, and Ne.sub.2.sup.+ which function to absorb the 282 nm laser radiation, thereby impending generation of high energy lasing output. Formation of these atomic and molecular ions is unavoidable in prior art e-beam excited discharges since large amounts of energy are used for the formation of XeBr by dissociating Br.sub.2 and ionizing Xe to from free Xe.sup.+ and Br.sup.- which interact to form XeBr. However, many molecular ions are also initially formed in the active medium which have an absorption spectrum which overlaps 282 nm, resulting in low output lasing energies.